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Want to take more interesting photos? A simple trick is to move.
Most of the time, we see the world from one of two positions: sitting or standing.
When we are taking photos, it's very easy to do the same, and take photos from a standing or sitting position... and more often than not, we take photos while we are standing.
However, if you want more interesting photos, try getting as far above or beneath your subject as possible.
When there's a balcony, a ladder, or a stone wall.. use them to gain height for your photo.
If there's nothing to stand on, try holding your camera high above your
head and aiming it. Shoot several shots and toss the ones that aren't
framed well (hey, they're just digital images, right?). With some
practice, you can get pretty good at aiming your camera from over your
head.
Getting low can have a similar effect. Lay down or kneel. The lower the better. Aim up at your subject and frame your shots.
Whether you get above or beneath your subject, you'll notice that your
photos are a lot more interesting than shot at the "normal" height.
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I recently began using Aperture to manage and edit photos. The program makes working with large quantities of photos much easier and faster. It's not intended to replace Photoshop, but does offer a nice set of photo editing tools
One of the nice things about Aperture is the growing number of plug-ins available. Plug-ins add features to the program, and most often help it connect with other programs or web services.
Many of the plug-ins for Aperture focus on making it easier and faster to move photos to the web. Before the plug-ins were available, I'd have to export a batch of photos to a folder (choosing the size needed for uploading) then either use another application for uploading, or the website's upload interface. That's a lot of steps.
Then I discovered that plug-ins existed for many of my favorite photo sharing sites. With the plug-ins, I could select the photos, choose "export to Flickr," choose a size for the photos, and click "upload." Four steps became one step... much better.
I've grabbed plugins for Smugmug , Flickr , and Google's Picassa photo-sharing service. There's even a plug-in for sending photos your Facebook page. Once installed, these plug-ins appear in the "export" menu.
If you use Aperture and would like to check out the current list of plug-ins (and download them -- most are free), zip over to Aperturepluggedin.com and enjoy.
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